Nu-ILB: What books have you purchased lately?

Right. But find another obscure American fantasy writer whom Borges wrote an enthusiastic introduction for.

i had an urge today:

charles bernstein's selected poems
an edition of blake's 'songs' with facsimiles of the pictures
yet anther copy of 'middlemarch'
ishmael reed's new one
another philip kerr bernie gunther book

how do you feel about good ol charlie bernstein, j.

well i just don't know, thus the book. i used to think maybe he was too academic, but something i read last year (what i don't know) made me think maybe he was an alright guy. we'll see.

is this one in there

Gertrude and Ludwig's Bogus Adventure

for Gabriele Mintz

As Billy goes higher all the balloons
Get marooned on the other side of the
Lunar landscape. The module’s broke—
It seems like for an eternity, but who’s
Counting—and Sally’s joined the Moonies
So we don’t see so much of her anyhow.
Notorious novelty—I’d settle for a good
Cup of Chase & Sand-borne—though when
The strings are broken on the guitar
You can always use it as a coffee table.
Vienna was cold at that time of year.
The sachertorte tasted sweet but the memory
burned in the colon. Get a grip, get a grip, before
The Grippe gets you. Glad to see the picture
Of ink—the pitcher that pours before
Throwing the Ball, with never a catcher in sight.
Never a catcher but sometimes a catch, or
A clinch or a clutch or a spoon—never a
Catcher but plenty o’flack, ’till we meet
On this side of the tune.

i like that poem! those are the kinds of poems i like!

yes, it is in there.

Silence: lectures and writings by John Cage £5.45
Screen Vol 21 Vol 4 £1.35
Ronnie Corbett's small man's guide ...or how to aspire to greater heights 30p

^a nice selection from today's visit to my favourite tumbledown 2nd hand bkshop:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqbbjhZnT01qdo62to1_500.jpg

tumbledown indeed! i think someone stole some of their shelves!

withdrawn library books:
Kingsolver, the poisonwood bible
the year's best science fiction 24 (2006)

$0.01 on amazon:
Griffin & Masters, Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Gruber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood

Is that bookshop in London Ward? My jowls are watering.

Just exhuming this thread from the rubble of the Great ILX Collapse of 2011 and dusting it off. We may need it again.

(plies feather duster industriously)

1 "Sketches by Boz (Penguin Classics)"
Dickens, Charles; Paperback; £7.29
In stock
1 "The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics)"
Ralph Waldo Emerson; Paperback; £9.59
In stock
1 "The Known World"
Jones, Edward P.; Paperback; £1.98
In stock
1 "Oxota: A Short Russian Novel"
Hejinian, Lyn; Paperback; £10.20
In stock
1 "Leningrad"
Davidson, Michael; Paperback; £6.75
In stock
1 "Basic Writings of Kant (Modern Library)"
Immanuel Kant; Paperback; £6.04
In stock

bleah.

i like those modern library classics editions

ive been pruning rather than buying atm and was sad to get rid of a bunch of them

Today:

A Compact History of Everything And More, David Foster Wallace, used trade paperback, $4.

sword of honour trilogy - evelyn waugh
the road - vasily grossman
the great enigma: new collected poems - tomas tranströmer

Delaney's Neveronya books. Sturgeon's Venus Plus X. Lukacs' The Historical Novel. Complete short stories of W. Somerset Maugham,

man, they really screwed up the cover on that trade paperback

I bought the Dave Mustaine autobiography, and some second hand science fiction novels.

this was the third Christmas in a row where somebody not in my immediate family got me a cool book for Christmas:

Xmas 2009 = cousin's husband sent me 2666
Xmas 2010 = HS friend/then next door neighbor gave me Kavalier & Clay (still need to read this btw)
Xmas 2011 = La Lechera gave me a signed advance copy of her husband's book Rotters

:D

Last few months:

Gao Xingjian - One Man's Bible
Kenzaburo Oe - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
Tayeb Salih - Season of Migration to the North
Robert Frost - Selected Poems
Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching
Beckett - Murphy, The Trilogy
Glenway Wescott - The Pilgrim Hawk
Chekhov - Selected Letters

Graham Greene - Our Man in Havana, for a friend.

went to one of my favorite book spots near my parent's place today. such a glorious day and they have such a beautiful setting up there. never want to leave. and, never feel like i have enough time. trying NOT to buy too much for myself, but everything is so cheap there. owl pen in greenwich, ny. can't see the incredible view of the rolling hills from these shots though. should have brought my camera.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_404h/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2011/06/01/Production/Sunday/Travel/Images/it5_owl%20pen%20entrance.jpg

http://www.studiotour.org/sites/default/files/owl_pen_0.jpg?1308850073

got richard scarry collection for cyrus, a william steig collection for rufus (he's doing a report on steig for school), a grandma moses book for my mom, and a book on the reconstruction for maria. for me:

big fat little lit (spiegelman/mouly collection that's actually for me to have something fun to read to cyrus at night. walt kelly/sendak/burns/clowes/deitch/feiffer/gaiman/crockett johnson/kaz/woverton/etc)

the dark lady - louis auchincloss

the mackerel plaza - peter de vries

mindswap - robert sheckley

the tents of wickedness - peter de vries (always buy de vries stuff in hardcover even if i have a paperback. they had two fine first editions that i didn't have as well but i didn't go for them. i probably should have, they were priced nicely.)

the rector of justin - louis auchincloss (ditto with louis. i have a softcover of this, but couldn't resist a hardcover. especially for 3 bucks.)

the tunnel of love - peter de vries (sweet hardcover edition)

we can build you - philip k. dick (daw paperback for a buck. think i have a softcover reissue of this...)

the face of another - kobo abe

the book of john brunner - john brunner (stories, essays, and other odds and ends)

from this day forward - john brunner (stories/hardcover)

the shortwave rider - john brunner (also nice hardcover)

(also picked up 5 mad magazines from the late 60's/early 70's and the owner threw those in for free. my kinda deal. 59 bucks total for everything.)

The Power Broker - Robert Moses biography by Robert Caro ( who used to live in my building in the Bronx). It's about 6 pounds of paperback goodness. Wish there was an ebook version.

However I've decided to finish up all my current reads before getting too far into it.

The Face of Another is mad and fun and OTT

Need to read some auchincloss

the dollmaker - harriette arnow

the studhorse man - robert kroetsch

the death ship - b. traven

tales - leroi jones

a story that ends with a scream (and eight others) - james leo herlihy

the rivals of sherlock holmes - edited by hugh greene

the damnation of theron ware - harold frederic

lancelot - walker percy

the cannibal - john hawkes

blow-up and other stories - julio cortazar

home - leroi jones

confessions of zeno - italo svevo

sheeper - irving rosenthal

the moonstone - wilkie collins

haircut and other stories - ring lardner

red dirt marijuana and other tastes - terry southern

the watcher and other stories - italo calvino

three tales - flaubert

minds meet - walter abish

no respect - intellectuals & popular culture - andrew ross

a night at the movies - or, you must remember this - robert coover

the king and the corpse - tales of the soul's conquest of evil - heinrich zimmer - edited by joseph campbell

you didn't even try - philip whalen

roberte ce soir & the revocation of the edict of nantes - two novels by pierre klossowski

the oxford book of american literary anecdotes - edited by donald hall

summer storm - juan garcia hortelano

you know me al - ring lardner

a soldier of humor and selected writings - wyndham lewis

mulligan stew - gilbert sorrentino

the butterfly - a story in nine parts - michael rumaker

brought those home to read. because i am starting college in 1974 this fall.

yep. WIth a list like that you're not going to have much time to do anything else

the oxford book of american literary anecdotes - edited by donald hall

huh. that exists

The best anecdote in that is the one by George Plimpton about Marianne Moore and Muhammad Ali writing "A Poem on the Annihilation of Ernie Terrell." These days you can probably find it on the intranetz.

philip whalen with some other dudes

http://jacketmagazine.com/33/gb/images/gb10.jpg

now i'm wondering if coyote press was started by peter coyote

http://www.coyotesjournal.com/images/didnt_try_frontlg.jpg

http://www.coyotesjournal.com/Coyote_Books.html

Some tasty stuff there

book of interviews about director Alan Clarke
Desmond Morris' "The Human Zoo" in a secondhand store
ordered "Apocalypse Culture" from Amazon

By Robert Lindner, who also wrote Rebel Without A Cause, title lifted for movie (his book was about psychopathia)
This 'un incl. "The Jet-propelled Couch," whose manically mythopoeic subject is still heavily rumored to be Paul Linebarger, AKA SF bard Cordwainer Smith and other pen names:

http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/6499822-L.jpg

Have ordered the new Clarice Lispector translations

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/images/888.jpg
http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/images/914.jpg

nice! great cover idea.

Got Nick Tosches' In the Hand of Dante delivered at work today. Which was a surprise, as I'd completely forgotten ordering it. Because I was drunk.

Happy to report I finally ran into an ILB-er in a bookshop! Got the 1st vol of Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson and Hadrian VII by F.R. Rolfe.

Good choices!

from a neighbor's garage sale:

dostoyevsky 3-fer (notes from underground/poor people/the friend of the family)
jervey tervalon, ed. - 'geography of rage: remember the los angeles riots of 1992'
e.h. gombrich - 'the story of art'

I recently traded about a dozen books at Powell's Books and came home with:

Epistles of Horace, translated by David Ferry, bilingual edition, used hardcover, like-new condition. $15.95.

The Greek Alexander Romance, translated by Richard Stoneman, Penguin Classics used paperback, very good condition. $5.95.

Laxdaela Saga, translated by Magnusson and Palsson, Penguin Classics, used paperback, very good condition. $4.95.

Because of what I traded, these three cost me $0.65 out of pocket.

Latest Amazon purchases:
JG Ballard, Millennium People (not one of his best, but Amazon knocked the price down to $2 and change for no reason so why not)
Thomas Ligotti, My Work Is Not Yet Done (I've been on a huge sf/horror kick lately and decided to finally get around to Ligotti; this is my third after Teattro Grottesco and Grimscribe: His Lives and Works)
some douchebag, Ready Player One (do not read this it is awful)

and a deeply irresponsible Kindle spree:
Rudy Rucker, The Complete Stories and The Collected Essays (I love Rucker's approach to ebooks; cheap, complete, and absurdly long)
Gahan Wilson, Everybody's Favorite Duck
The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith
Steve Aylett, The Inflatable Volunteer

Library book sale!

Delillo, White Noise
Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt
Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue (super pumped to find this, especially in classy old Penguin edition)
Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
Kobo Abe, Woman in the Dunes
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (Nabokov translation)
Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
a couple Dorothy Sayers novels

the daumal is a total score (found an old city lights edition for a few dollars five or so years ago) and it's pretty awesome. if it's the early eighties(?) shattuck translation he incorporated some newly discovered material into the penguin that's not in the city lights (as well as editing out parts from his original intro for some reason). reminds me i should really get around to reading a night of serious drinking sometime.

of late:

ann quin - berg
perec - things/a man asleep
robbe-grillet - jealousy/in the labyrinth
queneau - zazie in the metro
gombrowicz - ferdydurke
nabokov - speak, memory
pynchon - vineland (got rid of the paperback soon after first reading it, a mistake maybe?)
conversations with stockhausen
angela carter - the sadeian woman
denton welch - fragments of a life story
richard jefferies - hodge and his masters

hmm, also leiris' brisees collection and manhood.

all for 3 euros

joseph conrad - the nigger of the 'narcissus'/typhoon and other stories
evelyn waugh - brideshead revisited
philip k dick - the man in the high castle
dennis cooper - try
simone de beauvoir - the woman destroyed